Posts Tagged ‘editing’

The philosophy I share with all students and editing/coaching clients?Anyone–ANYONE–can deconstruct and rewrite a manuscript. Anyone can learn to rework a story one element and scene and character at a time. Last week I shared some of my basic techniques for understanding the key characters in your completed story draft (at a high level). Click here and here for those posts, to catch up or refresh or try to niggle a bit more out of each one.

This week and next, we’re diving into the actual method of deconstructing. My method. The title of this series is HOW YOU RE-WRITE, and the overall blog category is HOW YOU WRITE. So, disclaimer time: this works for me and many of my clients and students, but the only way you’ll know if it works for you is IF YOU WORK ON REWRITING SOMETHING OF YOUR OWN. Eh-hem… Sorry, it’s a nit for me.

What’s the deal, you ask?

Just as a refresher: re-writing is hard; looking at what’s not working with your characters and plot points and themes and secondary everything can be a nerve-wracking, soul-sucking, insecurity-making exercise; and a lot of people listen but never try many of the basic, not-so-hard-to implement exercises I recommend. Which is too bad, because learning to rewrite (and we’re all ALWAYS learning, with every new project) is your job. It’s not an option. And I can’t tell you the number of clients who fade away or students whose enthusiasm wavers after a course ends or followers contact me years later to say they still haven’t finished that book they were working on back when, but they’ve started 5 new ones since…and not finished them, either.

Which is unfortunate, sad and avoidable. Just do the work (or in this case the re-work). Do it. We all have to. All of our pretty babies are drafted in the shadows of “ugly.”

It’s madness to think yours won’t, and inexcusable as an artist to let your creative drive for approval (especially your own) block you from learning and applying the craft that will better enable you to bring your unique voice and vision and stories to readers who are languishing these days, in a sea of often poorly-written, poorly constructed, badly delivered free or so-close-to-free-it-doesn’t-matter digital content.

Rant almost over. Except to say this: make what you create matter as viscerally and beautifully and impactfully (not a word, but you get the gist) as it can, by understanding it, honing it, and ruthlessly re-working it to the best of your ability. (more…)

Then grab all those notes you’ve made from your own Work-in-Progress, because you did your homework and have been looking at your current draft, right? Right?! And maybe you had a bit of a struggle encapsulating what’s happening with your characters at these key story turning points (Inciting Incident, Midpoint, and Black Moment). If so, welcome to the club. These aren’t high concepts most of us have nailed down when we first begin to draft.

So, let’s take another stab at it. Even if you’re happy so far with what you’ve learned about your story from using the chart, indulge me and lean into Lesson 2 and your draft with a fresh set of eyes.

The B-M-E Chart Process

Some quick definitions as we begin. Just summaries, for the sake of this exercises and post.

Inciting Incident: the first key turning point in a manuscript, when something happens that has never happened before, propelling the protagonist and antagonist together into the external flow of the story.

Midpoint: the center-most turning point in the manuscript, the tent post “propping up” the external and internal arcs of the story;the “ah-ha” moment when the protagonist realizes the “true” goal/conflict of her/his journey and pivots (through a shift in motivation) toward pursuing the objective that will drive her choices and actions for the second half of the novel.

Black Moment: the pinnacle moment where all that is at stake for the protagonist is revealed and all hope is lost if the the protagonist hasn’t learned enough throughout the story’s arc and/or isn’t ready to make the no-going-back, life-changing choice being asked of her.

Step 1: Can you isolate these turning points in your draft?

Not theoretically, not as you think back about what you meant to do with your story. Actually, physically, can you turn to these places in your printout (PLEASE, when you’re deconstructing a drafted work-in-progress, print it out and work with a hard copy. I swear, developmental/content editing is so much more effective at the analytical stage if you work with hard copy rather than scrolling through a digital copy)?

I have a method I’ll describe in a later re-write lesson for isolating specific scenes while deconstructing a novel, and how to learn the most you can from that exercise. But for now do the best you can and put your finger on when these three critical events happen to your protagonist. Not what you planned to do, or what you meant to do, but what you physically wrote as you drafted. (more…)

Re-writing is your friend. No, seriously. Re-writing is your BEST creative friend of all… Revisions, if you will. But when I teach and keynote and author coach and content edit, I make a clear distinction between line and copy editing and proof reading and the creative work of developmental editing, also known as re-writing.

And since for most of us mere mortals, our first full draft of a project rarely tumbles out of our brains fully realized, just dying to be written, part of our job–arguable the most important part of your job–is re-crafting that draft until it’s its best self. And that ain’t easy. In fact, resistance to re-working and re-writing and re-imagining the whole that’s sprouted from that kernel of an idea that drew you to write a story is the Number One reason a lot of authors never publish traditionally, and why a great deal of independently-published novels will never find a home in a reader’s heart.

Rewriting isn’t an easy friend. It’s overwhelming work, and creative fatigue and doubt and frustration can win the ensuing battle if you let them. But you’re a professional writer. Say it with me, “I’M A PROFESSIONAL WRITER.”

And your job is to take control of your creative process every step of the way. And for the purposes of this How You Write post, your job is to rewrite your draft for however long it takes for the story and characters and journeys you’ve created to connect with the reader on every level possible. You’re the boss, not the draft. You’re ready to work through the exhausting process of diving back in over and over. Really, you are ;o)

The way to do that?

Simple.

No, the process isn’t simple. But you job is, so to speak. All you have to do is break your draft down into simple parts, so you can effectively execute the work left to be done in manageable chunks.

When you’re drafting with a plan (and you have a plan, right?) or rewriting with plan (because you revamp your plan for your story before you rewrite, right?), you give yourself a chance to conquer the overwhelming, sinking feeling that you can’t succeed at something as complex as creating a novel. You allow yourself to focus on one piece of the story at a time, until the whole manuscript finally begins to take shape. But what is your re-writing plan???

I’ll get more specific about my re-writing approach in my twice-weekly July How You Write blog updates. But for now, accept for the sake of argument that writing is a process (while creativity and voice and the compulsion to share story with the world through the written word is a gift, bless you heart…). And as part of that process, re-writing can be learned and executed and mastered by anyone determined get better at her/his craft.

To help simplify things today as we dip our toe into re-writing…

I encourage every new student and client to do what I do with a freshly drafted first pass at a story–focus on the beginning, middle, and end of your characters’ journeys, as you deconstruct what you’ve achieved with your novel. Before you rewrite the first word, you first have to understand (to “conquer”) what you’ve already written.

First up! I teach students and clients to pinpoint the emotional focus of a character at the inciting incident of a story, at the midpoint, and at the black moment.

Make a chart (easily done in Word or Excel or freehand on a notepad). A simple one, with a row for your protagonist, your antagonist and perhaps one significant secondary character. Three columns: Beginning, Middle, End.

Then read through those three key turning points in your story draft (inciting incident, midpoint and black moment) and see if you can define the state of each character’s internal journey. Jot down only a sentence or two for each turning point and each character. You should be able to summarize very specifically how a character is growing or wanting to change at each critical juncture. Once you’re done, take a look…

Is each character’s emotional state dynamic and arcing throughout the story? (more…)

How to explain how planning and prepping and early drafting for a new novel feels…?

It’s like finding out you’re pregnant, I guess, and wondering what your new baby will be like. Or graduating from college, hoping and dreaming about that first/new job. Or meeting the man/woman you think will be your soul mate, and wondering if your life together could really be that amazing.

Or, if you’re an angsty writer not liking not knowing if what you’re doing is going to suck EGGS, like this.

Or this.

Or this.

I’ve written 27 wildly successful novels, by many’s standards. I’ve often made a living creating something out of nothing. Which is decidedly more often, lucky me, than most who get a hankering to write a book and embark on the crazy journey I’m on.

How can I still be so nervous? Worried? Troubled to my very core, so much so that I can’t really write deeply yet, because all the reflections on the surface keep shimmering in and out and away from me, too quickly for me to see clearly.

You know you want to do what you’re doing. You’re dying to get see what the beautiful thing your creating will be, once it’s done. And you’re petrified. You’re feeling less than. You’re stumped as to how anyone could possibly think you could do this. Or is it just me?

We sense the danger of being wrong, of failing, of not living up, I think. (more…)

Samantha Perry was all dressed up with someplace to go. Yet it was closer to midnight than dawn in her winter world. Amidst what wouldn’t be a flowering garden for several months, as if a July morning’s warmth surrounded her, she paced another lap around her community’s park.

The sun was due. It would soon be another January day like any other day in their northern suburb of Atlanta. Another harmless moment to get through. Nothing yawned more threatening than getting her sleepy family ready for their Mimosa Lane Monday. But on a scale from nervous to freaked out, Sam had been silently racing toward a meltdown the entire weekend.

Somewhere around three o’clock last night she’d risen from beside her still-sleeping husband, showered and dressed for the day and bundled into the heavy coat Georgia demanded from only a few months each year. Heading downstairs and through her cozy kitchen’s French doors, she’d escaped into the peace that being outside and alone brought her. She’d been night walking for hours.

Opening DraftSweet Summer SunriseSeasons of the Heart
Book Two

***

It’s a crazy work and personal weekend.

I won’t go into the details, except to say that opportunities are taking off all over the place, and so is the stress, and so is the upheaval in my “away from work” life. It’s usually like that. You never see the good or the bad stuff coming, and you never appreciate the calm until the storm’s upon you.

So, of course, I owe my publisher the second book in the series that’s taking off like no one expected, with it’s Christmas novel launch.And on top of my life being overwhelmed with back-to-back holidays AND promoting a book release that keeps (YAY!) going strong, I’m facing the rewriting of a 380 page rough draft that means so much to me–but isn’t at the point where I think it’ll mean anything to anyone else unless I recraft it over and over and over again, until it’s talking on it’s own.

Publishing isn’t for sissies, my friends.And it’s always about the next book. And the next. And these days, success in digital publishing about having an ongoing series with lots of backlist titles. The only way to do that is to keep writing forward and building into what readers are buying–and somehow maintaining the integrity of your work and stories and characters, so you keep pleasing the fans who are loving what you’ve already done. (more…)

So, you’ve participated in NANOWRIMO. Now what? NOTE: I didn’t say you’d finishedNANO. I saw a tweet from someone yesterday saying she wasn’t going to finish her NANO project this year, and that she was likely never going to finish this book at all. And that’s just sad to me. It’s the worst of what can happen with an extreme challenge like this: demotivation. Or even harder to watch than that: any writer, no matter how new, deciding after a month of dedicated draft writing that she CAN’T do what she wants to with a book–to the point that she’s giving up before giving it a real chance. Don’t do that, my friends. DON’T!

ANYONE can learn to deconstruct and rewrite story. It’s always better if you approach a draftingproject with as much planning as possible, at some point WE ALL feel lost while we draft, even multiple-published authors.

I just finished a 3-day writing retreat where I’ve drafted 150 pages. Which just about killed me. And not because of NANO. Because I have a book due–NOW. And sometimes in this business, no matter how much we’d like to for every book, faster has to take precedence over slow and thoughtful and story slowly evolving in its own organic way. It’s an unfortunate fact of our world that getting the next book out sooner rather than later is key to maintaining and escalating reader interest, particularly in a series like the one I’m writing in my Seasons of the Heart books for Montlake. Christmas on Mimosa Lane is selling well now, readers are asking for Sweet Summer Sunrise, and by God I’m going to finish this draft so I can promise them it’s coming on time next June.

The question became very quickly once I’d squirreled myself away from all distractions to create, “Could I? Would I?”

I’ve been drafting UGLY. Really ugly. But there’s also beauty in what I’ve created.

This dark but creative place that crashing a draft out becomes is what I teach students when we talk about Improvisation. The story and characters and community I’m dreaming up as I type like a mad woman (with purpose, because I have the bones of a story outline) have taken over at this point. (more…)

So you’re in the middle of NANOWRIMO and typing words and pages every day until your fingers fall off and your brain short circuits. But what are you creating? Is it anything you’ll keep once December arrives? Drafting with creative freedom is key in this sort of challenge, but creating with purpose is the linchpin to your success.

Write without constraint, yes. As I said in last week’s How We Write post, draft without clinging too tightly to planning or expectation. BUT you have to revise every rough word you draft. And you don’t ant to have written yourself into so many dark corners and black holes that a finished novel that you can sell will be impossible to carve out of your draft.

How do you lay the groundwork for the “rework” you know needs to be done, while you’re giving your story the creative freedom it needs to come to life?

Me? Remember that I’m a geeky, techno-loving girl who while drafting must continually slap my hand and let go of the overly organized stuff that enables the more analytical side of my brain. So nix on the forms and charts for me. But keeping track of changes I see coming and new things I draft into the story on the fly is my thing. Being analytical while I create is crucial, without allowing the right side of my brain to interrupt the left’s mad dash toward a draft’s finish line.

I’m in the midst of writing Sweet Summer Sunrise, the next book in my Seasons of The Heart series for Montlake, and I’m crashing things as usual on a pretty tight deadline. Layered, emotional, complex things. Four points of view–one of them a child. Community. Romance. Psychological and relationship realism that’s more valuable to me than all the rest. At least three subplots going on at once, and that’s just the external stuff. Internal journeys are even more sensitive to overwriting and wandering, because you have to be subtle about how you share a character’s journey so the reader doesn’t feel beaten over the head with it.

Of course there will be mistakes in my rough draft. I have to learn to accept that and again, as I said in last week, allow myself to write crap for a while so the better stuff will flow, too. A mistake I can always do something about later. An empty page, not so much.

My reality is that the whole package of what I’m writing is too complicated a thing to come together in a single draft.

Yet I need that first draft, so I have something I can revise and refine and rework until the story I’m dying to tell takes shape. So how do I keep up with everything I want to do, but am not quite doing yet, as I draft–without break the delicate flow of my creativity of these first words on paper?(more…)

How about we just talk about writing every day for a week, for those of us who have trouble with the grand scope of NANO. One day at a time for seven days, how will you draft every day–with PURPOSE–so that by the end of a week you’re motivated and enthusiastic and encouraged enough to go for another week. Screw the month-long pressure of being finished with a completed novel?

I teach draft writing, even though it’s my downfall. I’m currently drafting a new book and it’s driving me CRAZY because I don’t like not knowing what’s going to happen next. But I can’t know, not for certain no matter how much I plan what I’m going to do, until I draft the darn thing.

So why all the drama?

Frailty, they name is woman???

No, I’m just a perfectionist who doesn’t feel good when what’s coming out of my mind rough isn’t the golden, beautiful thing I want it to be yet. I have to give myself permission to write crap for a while, in order to have something that I can polish later. Shudder. Not my happy place, but this week I’m going to dive in and rough stuff out regardless.

Join me, won’t you?

Here’s the plan:

Write into a new story or book every day. EVERY day. Not thinking about it every day. WRITING it every day.

Don’t get up from your computer until your daily progress is done. Finished. DONE. No exceptions.

Don’t buy into the excuse that you can’t, because it’s too hard. It’s supposed to be hard, especially when you’re distracted or afraid or worried or mired in some other details of your life.

Don’t think you’re alone. I’m right there with you. If I can deal with it, you can. So, deal with it ;o)

And you know I wouldn’t leave you floundering without some, hopefully, helpful suggestions to keep you writing, right?(more…)

Once you have a draft of your novel, WHAT do you do with it? How do you make it better? Last Wednesday, we talked about deconstructing your story so you could see its various parts and come up with a rewriting plan. Now let’s get down to it–what parts of your book should you consider pulling out of the tapestry, fine tuning (or overhauling), and then weaving back in?

Last weekwe left off with the protagonist, and you’d isolated the parts of the book that showed his/her character arc to the reader. With your POV scenes flagged, you have a visual road map to how your treating this important story element–the lens through which your reader sees and feels and experiences the story. Exactly what is someone who doesn’t live in your head getting out of how you’re handling your protagonist?

Let’s start with some things you can see just with the “flagging” technique I described last week:

Look at how often that character is in point of view. Are there large stretches when we’re in the antagonist’s POV or a secondary characters’? Is there not enough variety, and you need to work in more alternative looks at the action in your story and show things more from the perspective outside your protagonist’s head?

Look at how you open each POV scene. Is it always in dialogue? Always in narrative? Always in action? Always coming or going from somewhere? This may seem simple, but it’s the type of pattern we follow can get into in drafting and not even realize it. Mixing things up from a single character’s perspective at times can add a fresh look to a scene.

Skim through the character’s POV scenes. Do you see a lot of dialogue with no external observations or internal thoughts? Too much internal dialogue and only sparse dialogue. This kind of review can give you an immediate feel for what might need work for a single character, no matter what you’re doing with the rest.

Read each of the protagonist’s scenes in the first half of the draft. Can you clearly see his/her build up to and reaction to the inciting incident first turning point and midpoint of the story? Is he/she changing in each key place in the story, and is that clear in from his/her POV?

Do the same for the key turning points in the second half of the story.

THEN (this is more story structure detail than I usually summarize, but here goes), look at his/her emotional reality at the Inciting Incident.(more…)

Anyone–ANYONE–can deconstruct and rewrite a manuscript. Anyone can learn to rework a story one scene at a time. And we’re talking rewriting–NOT copy editing a manuscript to catch punctuation or grammar mistakes, or line editing to make sure prose flows beautifully. These skills are important, too, but only after an author has dissected the first draft and rewoven it’s parts into the best story possible. These are the ideas I discuss with writers at conferences year around.

This week in HoWW, I’ll do my best to cover the high points of a deconstruction technique that, combined with rewriting, it takes me a two-day weekend workshop to teach properly. This is interactive stuff that I love to work with in person, while students apply what I’m showing them to a work in progress. In fact I’m already lining up several hands-on rewriting workshops for 2013. And the mindset of one of these weekend retreats that I hope you’ll also achieve, at least a little, after reading this post, is–

No more excuses for not rewriting.

No more hiding behind “not seeing” what needs to be changed in your story.

No more big, scary book that’s too complicated to rework.

No more feeling out of control of your creativity as you rewrite!

Next Wednesday, we’ll get more into what to do with your story once you can see its various pieces more clearly. Today, let’s zero in on the seeing part!

Once your draft is completed, the story can seem too complex to tackle, right?

You feel too close to your work to be able to analyze and re-craft it. There’s just too much there, and it’s impossible to see where each change will take the story. It’s easy to find yourself rewriting in circles, never really getting anywhere. And who has that kind of time?

So, let’s talk deconstruction technique. Not HOW to do the revisions themselves–that will be for next week. And, frankly, fully learning how to revise a scene or a chapter or an act or an entire novel is more about trial and error and learning from experience). This is a post about how to deconstruct what you have, so you can get to work on what needs to be done–THAT I can show you today ;o)